Getting up and on with it every day is a choice. Even raising the question may baffle some people. “Of course, we have to get up every morning and face the day.”
No we don’t. Not really. And therein lies the miracle and mystery of our lives.
It has been a long time since I heard the phrase “will to live.” We have not been actively and daily engaged in close-to-home wars or other mass traumas that provide us with examples. Yet I believe it is still very much a thing. How else does staying alive make any sense after heart shredding and gut-wrenching losses?
I watch in wonder at beautiful young men and women whose limbs have been blown off in foreign lands. They come home to recover and rehabilitate. What they have to recover from defies understanding. How they manage to go through the rehabilitation required to re-engage in their lives stupefies me.
These young men and women are lucky enough – if you can call it that – to have well-supported systems in place to aid in their recovery. And they go through recovery with fellow travelers dealing with similar injuries. They help each other find a reason to keep on living and moving forward.
War has always been riddled with stories of hope and recovery even in the most miserable and bleak conditions imaginable. I recently finished watching the mini-series The Pacific on Netflix. Not only did I not know much about the skirmishes that took place in the Forties in that part of the world, the story unfolds unsparingly episode by episode in reflecting the horrors of war.
I winced (as did any others who watched the series, I am sure) during a scene where an American Marine tosses rocks into the open skull and exposed brain of a recently killed Japanese soldier, sitting upright with his rifle still in his hands.
I did come away from that series with a better understanding of why veterans share such a deep and intractable bond. Sharing extreme experiences can do that.
Parents whose children were murdered in mass shootings. Victims of natural disasters. They likely use the same god-given techniques to get through and live with it. That experience was and would always be “theirs.”
Opportunities for extreme bonding generally diminish as we get older. Gone is the fresh blush and deep impact of first experiences (reflect on your first kiss or lover). We are more open and malleable in youth.
In fact, a key part of staying “young at heart” is remaining open. Which can be quite a challenge. Many people don’t even bother.
I recently attended a high school reunion where it was exciting and fun to catch up with our remaining high school buddies. The telling part was the stories of those who are still around and didn’t come. They hated high school then and saw no good reason to relive it now in their dotage.
Fair enough. But that attitude comes at a cost to everyone. Both themselves and those of us who missed seeing them again. It is very likely now that we never will.
We eventually learn to roll with life’s punches. We realize loss is a constant as life continually renews itself. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Like leaves in autumn, our friends start falling from the tree of our lives. Celebrities who defined our adulthood start to leave, too. Ryan O’Neal most recently.
Even political stalwarts like Henry Kissinger and the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor have recently died. (I recall trying to reach her by telephone for the better part of a day for an interview on CBC-Radio when she was first appointed back in the Eighties. My calls were not returned. A missed journalistic coup.)
So this morning (if it wasn’t obvious), I didn’t wanna get up and face the day. No harm would have been done by me whiling the day away in bed. I’ve done it before. But, no. There is a “to-do” list to face. And a husband to make coffee for. And a blog post to write. And Christmas looming.
We may never fully understand and appreciate what external and internal forces get us up and moving forward every day. But I’m sure our will to live has something to do with it. And our tacitly held expectation of pleasant and happy surprises. Especially around Christmas.
This season of light and miracles practically demands we engage with or at least acknowledge the beautiful mysteries and possibilities of life. That’s enough to get me up and going on most days even as I balance less beautiful challenges with utterly no mystery.
It is all part of the whole that we eventually learn to accept as life. Both the astonishingly good and the horrifically bad.
A line from the poem Desiderata sums it up: “With all of its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
On it – even if somewhat sleepily and reluctantly this particular morning.
Expressive Compulsive 